Running Head: AFFORDABLE HEALTH

Affordable Healthcare and the Integration of Universal Health Care Systems

Kayla Y. Mendoza

University of Texas at El Paso

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Abstract

The current standings of the health care policies in the United States are one of the biggest

concerns of the mass population of citizens. With no direct plan and the threat of removal of

others, there has been left plenty of room to debate. The closest affiliation of a universal health

care system was made possible in 2009 under the presidential term of Barrack Obama. The

former president initiated and passed the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

This allowed citizens to have easier access to cheaper health care and implemented the need for

everyone to have health insurance. Where plenty of fundings have gone towards the education,

promotion and implementation of more than substantial healthcare, the U.S. still does not

compare to other leading countries in terms of actual care and progression in patients. However,

the current numbers still show a lot of suffrage and inability from the citizens to afford proper

care, an issue that is slowly becoming larger and larger, while other grossing countries have

already solved all these problems for themselves.

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Affordable Healthcare and the Integration of Universal Health Care Systems

In any situation, a person’s health should be considered a basic human right, yet often

times, citizens are left struggling to cover all their needs. In fact, most citizens tend to believe

that having access to great health care and insurance is a privilege or delicacy that only few are

entitled to. The need and deprivation is there, and hardly anyone is doing anything about it, only

because they are accustomed to the routine of having to sacrifice the availability of their health

services.

However there is the constant battle in actually being able to afford health insurance.

Problems like these arise in every household, and people have to debate with themselves whether

or not they really need medical attention or their annual physician's visit. This is something that

needs to be more heavily discussed so that actual change can be made in order to get our country

to carry the universal healthcare system. Most people do not have to think about this at all

because they are on shared plans or think they have full coverage through work or other

organizations. However, if you were not a dependent on someone else’s plan, ask yourself these

questions; If you were to find your own health care insurance, do you know exactly what it

would cover in terms of procedures and check-ups? How much would it cover before you had to

pay out of pocket? If you did not have health insurance, do you think you would be able to afford

an emergency visit or procedure? These are just a few of the things that you need to consider

before selecting a health insurance plan, and a few things that need to be considered just to see if

it is really necessary in terms of how dire the situation may be and how much money is in the

bank.

This issue is growing quickly and tends to have a bigger impact on communities along

the border who quite frankly would rather take their services across the border than have to pay
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as much as they do here. In our current society and terms of government of officials, more

people need to be aware of how their livelihood may be affected, should the price be decreased

or increased. Not just family’s but young adults who are newly claiming independence also need

to make sure that their basic needs to not get overseen. As of today, many citizens are settling or

completely ignoring their health due to financial issues, this is a dangerous cycle that could in

some instances have fatal repercussions, a cycle that could be broken if our nation banded

together for change and moved one step closer to fully achieving basic human rights by adopting

a universal healthcare system.

On a global economic standpoint, the United States alone is one of the only countries

who spend as much as 17% of our overall yearly economy (Squires 2015). The U.S. has

provided itself with a high reputation of spending the most money and having the biggest budget

on the holistic care for their citizens, but still there is a large gap regarding who gets to reap in all

those benefits. On average, other countries who are relatively at the same economic level as us,

only spend half the percentage that we do on health care and somehow their citizens seem to be

doing better off than ours. It has been found that a lot of our spendings are to fund all the

technology we have implemented into the field and all the medications that are being deemed

necessary and prescribed. Resources and platforms all meant to help sustain life and well being,

yet the United States still falls behind in the statistics in life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity

and disease and chronic illnesses. It stands to reason to question why more lives and general

well-being is still being threatened when the U.S. has so many amenities that others do not. If all

the physicians, treatments and medications are there, why are they still so far from reach for so

many citizens?
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In other counties different forms of universal health care is already being practiced.

Countries like Canada have systems where you can walk in and out without receiving a bill or

paying virtually nothing at all. Counties like these are able to provide such care because they are

funded through their own taxation systems. Many do believe however, that because everyone

will have availability to ultimately free healthcare, citizen taxes will skyrocket and medical

professional salaries with plummet. According to an article published by the Huffington post,

Canada’s taxation system has made it so that neither the taxation system used to support the

health care system nor the people who are paying for services they aren’t in need of. Even more

so, in the event of needing emergency care, patients are forced to wait longer to be attended to

since there are no longer any other criteria’s to filter who is more eligible to be seen in terms of

health insurance. Considerably, the extreme conditions of the country’s spendings and lack of

good and substantial performance were not worth it. The Director of Health Policy Studies at the

Fraser Institute, Nadeem Esmail even states, “and it gets worse. Changing demographics mean

Canada's health care system has a funding gap of $537 billion. While health care is costly and

underperforming today, in the absence of reform the future will either hold large increases in

taxes, further reductions in the availability of medical services, further erosion of non-health care

government services, or all of the above.” Surely, this could be considered a fault to the

otherwise efficient and effective use of a universal health care system.

According to recent trends, if a country were to make such a drastic policy change that

would largely effect the economy, the economy would take a large dip, as it did when the

country was first introduced to Obamacare. However, no person’s life should be weighed based

on how much they are willing to pay for it. The overall health and well being of a person should

be a basic right. No one person should be charged in order to be able to maintain and control a
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disease they did not ask to have. If young adults and families were to begin to take more interest

in policies like these real changes can be made. Changes that could save thousands of lives and

raise this country’s value and economy in the long run.

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References

Esmail, N. (2013, October 09). 'Free' Health Care in Canada Costs More Than It's Worth.

Retrieved March 16, 2018, from

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/nadeem-esmail/canada-free-health-care_b_3733080.html

Lai, R. N. (2013, August 20). The influence of socio-economic status and multimorbidity

patterns on healthcare costs: A six-year follow-up under a universal healthcare system.

Retrieved March 19, 2018, from

https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-9276-12-69

Roberts, C. W., & Liu, H. (2014). On the Cultural Foundations for Universal Healthcare:

Implications From Late 20th-Century U.S. and Canadian Health-Related Discourse.

Journal Of Communication, 64(4), 764-784. doi:10.1111/jcom.12079

Squires, D., & Anderson, C. (2015, October 08). U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective.

Retrieved March 16, 2018, from

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/oct/us-health-care-

from-a-global-perspective
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Figure 1
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Figure 2